Error costs Sea-Tac nearly $400K in missed parking charges

By MATT MARKOVICH, KOMO STAFF

Published 11:08 pm, Monday, December 10, 2012

A processing mistake at a Sea-Tac Airport parking garage mistakenly allowed some drivers to park for free, and the state auditor now wants to know how the nearly $400,000 mistake went unnoticed for so long.

For at least nine months, drivers who paid with credit cards and used one specific exit lane out of the garage were not charged for parking.

The missed charges were discovered in July after a few honest customers called the Port of Seattle to say their credit cards were not charged. After doing a little digging, officials discovered that thousands of drivers weren't charged.

The state auditor says from January to August, the port lost $387,000 to the faulty credit card processing system.

"This is a lack of oversight, certainly a lack of control over this. I think the public looks at it as a wasteful practice -- it's their money," said Auditor Brian Sonntag.

Port officials say they traced the problem to a single "ticket spitter" in the garage. Drivers who used the "spitter" to pay for parking rather than the kiosk inside were not charged.

"We have corrected what has occurred so it's not a problem going on right now," said Port spokesperson Perry Cooper.

The lost money represents less than 1 percent of the airport's annual parking revenue, but Sonntag said it's still a significant amount of money and wants to know why the error wasn't spotted earlier.

"You can have a problem with the system, you can have a mechanical failure," he said. "Our question was how does it get to that size?"

Airport officials say they're asking that very question.

"That's a good question, and we are trying to figure out from this third party auditor that's going to take a look at this to figure out what it was," Cooper said.

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The port hired a forensic accountant to investigate the mistake, and it will not "re-charge" drivers who took advantage of the faulty system.

Port officials also say the total lost revenue likely won't exceed the $387,000 that has been lost already, but the state auditor's office says they can't guarantee that because they've already found other card-processing problems.